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WOAT #8 – Crossing the Midlands #1

Copied from Summary

The Midlands Adventure: Crossing the Border. Since Roy is a wanted man in the Union he decides to sneak across the border and meet Alene on the other side in a small countryside village. The villagers are very suspicious of Alene trying to smuggle a foreigner across the border.

Suggested Titles

The wrong border

Back at the scene of the crime

Not welcome here

Summary Sentence

Alene has to wait in a small rural village while Roy sneaks across the border, but the villagers suspect something’s wrong and they’re not keen on outsiders to begin with.

Promise

This is a story about a “foreign” woman who has to go stay in a backwards countryside village where everyone sticks together, everyone’s got each others’ backs, and no one’s got any fondness for outsiders or weirdos.

Tropes – Story

Mysterious Past / The Cartel / The Exile / Price on their Head

Checkpoint Charlie / Walk into Mordor / Let’s Split Up, Gang

Hillbilly Horrors / Deep South

Traveling salesman

Doesn’t Trust Those Guys

Split and Reunion

Torches and Pitchforks

Escape / Big Heroic Run

Memento Macguffin

Who is Alene this time?

What does Alene want? Alene wants to get the hell out of the redneck backwater.

What does Alene need? Safety and belonging.

Scratch 1

Roy can’t cross the border the legal way and has to sneak across as a wolf.

Alene goes and stays in the village of Lil Eddy, and it’s not cool.

Roy shows up and the villagers accuse Alene of helping an illegal alien cross the border.

Scratch 2

Roy is a wanted man

Roy and Alene are on the train. They’ve arrived at the station right on the border and Roy owns up to not being able to cross the regular way. He’s been involved with the mob on a serious level and he’s wanted for a large number of crimes as well as for questioning on the crimes of others.

He hasn’t really had a plan so far and just thought he’d wing it, but now that Alene’s here, maybe she can make herself useful and help him out. She grumbles a bit but also agrees it’s reasonable (well, sort of). They check a map of the area and find the village of Lil Eddy which is close to the border and far from everything else. It’s probably their best bet for meeting up.

Alene can get there pretty quick as there’s a small puffer (steam train) that goes by regularly. Roy will be slower as he has to run himself, but probably not by more than a day or two.

The dreadful village of Lil Eddy

Alene arrives in Lil Eddy and starts having second thoughts right away. With her dark skin and modern clothes she stands out and gets the wrong kind of attention right away. It’s not that she does anything, the people just don’t like her, and they dislike her in the bad way – the way that says they’ll go out of their way to cause trouble for her and then cover for each other so no one ever finds out.

There’s no one in the village she can trust. Not the local sherif. Not the publican or the lady at the cafe. She can’t even trust the host at the train station, and that’s saying something.

What does happen is that as she goes around exploring the village on the first day she encounters a traveling peddler. He’s on a slow moving vehicle, either ox-drawn cart or an old tractor of some kind. He’s just passing through and he stops for a cup of coffee at the local cafe, but he really only does it to show he’s not scared of the villagers. He gives Alene the advice to get out of there as fast as she can because it’s not a good place. What kind of a peddler is it? Some kind of travelling salesman or a repair man of some kind? Maybe some kind of church representative, but he doesn’t stop in Lil Eddy because they’re all hung up on some other religious issues there? Perhaps a bit of all that. He may be a traveling fylk of some sort, selling flower seeds or wood carvings or something?

Anyway…

Alene pretends to be a journalist, which is pretty easy because it’s sort of true, and she says she’s doing a series of articles about hidden little gems off the beaten path. Places where you can get a feel for what life really is like in the countryside. This doesn’t go down very well and most people seem quite grumpy about the idea of getting more tourists to their little place. They don’t want no outsiders there…

Illegal Alien

The second evening Alene hears Roy howling out in the fields near the village. The villagers are obviously suspicious, and she has to do her best to try and sneak out undetected. She thinks she makes it, but when she and Roy return to the village the villagers spring a trap on them to try and capture them.

The villagers are armed, and while they’re no big threat to either Roy or Alene, neither of them is too keen on hurting anyone, and they also don’t want to drag too much attention to themselves.

It’s getting worse though. The villagers decide to apply their own local version of the law and set out to execute both Roy and Alene by hanging. After all, they’re foreigners and strangers and they crossed the border illegally so they must have sinned and must be deserving of death.

Eventually, there’s violence and fighting as Roy and Alene break free and make a run for it. They still have to drop by the train station to pick up Alene’s suitcase though, and then hit the road out. There’s no train due any time soon, and they’ve got no other option than to run for it. With their bags and clothes all with them they can’t shift and run, so it’s slow going with the villagers trailing them.

The werewolves are sturdier though and can keep running for longer than the villagers. Or maybe they have horses? Anyway, Roy and Alene eventually catch up with the traveller Alene met in the village the other day. He lets them hop on and get a ride. He will also cover for them in the next village in case the people from Lil Eddy calls up there or comes on the train (would they?).